


Live

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: CassieFest, F/M, Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie knew that was the last time she'd see Jake. But Jake wasn't done giving her orders, just yet. He had one more thing to show her. </p><p>A look at what Cassie did after Tobias, Jake and Marco went off to save Ax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live

**Author's Note:**

> Written for CassieFest over on Tumblr :) Feel free to use/distribute in any way you want.

Cassie had tried, very hard, to continue walking as though nothing had happened. But, even though she’d practiced how to be strong for years now her meeting with Jake was not something she could simply power through. Ronnie knew something was wrong; he didn’t smile, didn’t tease her, barely even spoke to her. And it was he who suggested that they cancel their dinner plans for the evening. She felt guilty latching on to his offer so eagerly, and played the part by spewing out lies of being tired and having work to do. He pretended to believe her. She pretended that she didn’t know he was pretending.

And, honestly, that guilt and horror was what started the night of tears.

She was Cassie the Animorph but she was not. And Ronnie wasn’t Jake. Pretending to believe his lies that he was okay… She couldn’t do that again. She simply could not stand beside somebody she had feelings for and believe the pretences she could see through with her eyes closed. That was what she cried for first; the fact that she was bringing _that_ onto the shoulders of a man who did not deserve the weight of her lies and guilt and pretences that she’d never truly believed.

For the rest of the night she cried for Marco and Tobias as the hope she’d still clutched to her that they could be saved ran out with the ticking of a clock. They’d go with Jake, and she knew – she _knew_ – what that meant. They were as good as dead already. And the determination that one day she’d get through to Tobias or that one day Marco would start believing that he loved his life as much as he said bled out with her tears.

The early hours of the morning – until four when she fell into an exhausted sleep – she cried because Ronnie was not Jake. She cried in relief that that fact was truth, she cried in anguish, she cried in guilt. Ronnie was not Jake. The mantra ripped her apart and healed her for four hours while the rest of the city slept around her, thousands of people oblivious to her anguish as they had been during the war.

When she woke to the sun streaming in her eyes through curtains she’d forgotten to close, Cassie honestly considered staying in bed for the day. The hollow hurt in her chest made her limbs heavy and all-too willing to obey the whispered suggestion of her mind. But she was Cassie, Ronnie’s Girlfriend and a whole slew of other titles that somehow gave her enough strength to take a shower, make herself look decent and decide to go for a walk.

She stepped right on the pile of papers on her doorstep before she noticed them. It took one glance down for her to recognize the handwriting. And then she stood and stared and tried to remember how to breathe through the tightness in her abdomen, trying desperately to figure out what to do.

In the end, she picked up the papers and took them back inside, curling up in a chair with them clutched tightly in her slightly shaking fingers. It was a relief when she started reading and she realized it wasn’t a letter written directly to her. (She didn’t think she would have been able to handle that.) The relief was short-lived: the actual words written in Jake’s hand cut her to pieces all the same.

_Writing everything that happened down for people to study was hard at first. So very hard. It was an act of inviting the nightmares and dark memories in. Not fighting them. But, after a while, this actually helped. I’ve found, however, that now I can’t control what I want to remember. So I’ll write it all down and simply leave out everything that nobody else deserves to know._

Jake wrote about the almost-forgotten day when he first met her. He wrote about how the only reason he’d gone over to the “girl’s side” of the playground was because Rachel had stolen one of his toys when her family had been over the night before. He wanted it back. Rachel – stubborn, brilliant, so-alive Rachel – had refused. Jake couldn’t remember why she’d taken it, only that in her mind it was the right thing to do at the time. He’d been so busy fighting with his cousin that he hadn’t noticed Cassie until she’d physically dragged Rachel away and told them to stop. He wrote how he’d stormed off and not thought about Rachel’s friend until Cassie had helped him up after some rough older kid had pushed him off the top of the Jungle Gym. He wrote how he was so surprised at her kindness and skill with the Superman band aids that he forgot he was supposed to cry at all the blood and the feeling of being winded.

Jake wrote about the first time he realized he found Cousin Rachel’s best friend beautiful. He used that exact word – beautiful. Not pretty or hot or gorgeous, like the girls on TV or in the magazines Marco always wanted to get his hands on. Beautiful, in a way he couldn’t describe even years and deaths and too much blood later. Jake wrote about how she made his heart pound and how painful the long, slow, awkward experience of becoming her friend was. He wrote about the bus trips spent side by side in silence and how his mind was always buzzing with a million things to say and no words to say them.

He wrote about Tom getting his first girlfriend and how he followed his brother around like a shadow, trying to figure out how to act and what to say and what the feelings starting to bloom in his chest meant. He spoke about how Tom finally got annoyed enough to rough with him and how, when the truth came out, how Tom was the one to take him to some quiet part of town and give him the man-to-man talk he’d wanted so desperately.

He wrote about Marco, Rachel and her hanging out awkwardly and how Rachel and Marco _knew_ and set aside their friendly rivalry long enough to tease Jake mercilessly. He wrote about Marco’s tactical planning as they had been back in the day: brilliant, but completely _innocent_. He wrote about Rachel a lot. Everything he could remember. The light in her eyes that he still saw going out in his dreams.

He wrote about spending Thanksgiving with her family. He wrote about their first school dance. He wrote about the first time he took her hand in his. He wrote about the kiss after he’d sent the Howler to its death and he finally told her the one thing that had slipped through into the collective memory of the children Crayak had subsequently destroyed. He wrote about the kisses after that – the shy ones stolen in secret and with beating hearts without the others knowing. He wrote about their disaster date that had left them both laughing so hard they could not breathe. He wrote about the way she hugged him and the time she wore one of Rachel’s dresses to come over for lunch and how he still kept the arm-down-a-badger’s-throat picture because it was her and he loved it. He used the word ‘love’. A lot.

Jake wrote about the downfall. He wrote about them sneaking into each others’ rooms at night so they could curl around each other, two children seeking comfort they could not get from their parents. He wrote about the growing darkness in his heart and how even she couldn’t stop it. He wrote about Tom getting the cube and about asking her to marry him. He wrote about the night exactly a year after his proposal when she’d turned up on his doorstep, sobbing and wanting a person he no longer was. His narrative tapered off during this retelling until the black scrawl on white paper stopped in mid sentence. Their story cut out abruptly; no resolution. No clear goodbye.

She was too numb to cry by the time she’d finished reading. There was nothing left in the hollowness of her chest that was human enough to sob. And so she ran a finger over the places the ink had run because of his tears and she let herself remember the night she _could_ have become Jake’s fiancée. She’d been completely lost on that night, unable to stop her mind from convincing her the last year had been a dream and the war was still raging around her but she was refusing to see it. On that night she’d been unable to grasp at the life she was struggling to build for herself. And so she’d gone to Jake. Jake, who had been their centre; the reason they hadn’t fallen apart. If she could just get him to be strong again (if she could just get him to be _Jake_ again) then everything would be all right. It _had_ to be.

She’d been met with the eyes of an old man. And he’d tried to comfort her but even the Jake she’d known and fallen in love with was never good with expressing his feelings. And all sitting beside him had done was rip her open even more because she _needed_ him and he was more lost than she was. That was when the half-baked crazy ideas that had driven her to his door resurfaced. She wanted to morph into a Yeerk so she could climb into his head and draw out the old Jake. She wanted to make good on the shy, fleeting, almost-spectral imaginings of him with his hands on her and her clothes falling like snow to the ground. Because if she made Jake give her his everything, then maybe she could reach into him and _fix_ him. If he’d just let down his walls, if he’d just let her in… And, anyway, Jake already had every bit of her heart and soul except her virginity. Why not give a piece of the last sliver of innocence she possessed to this boy who had grown and died far too quickly? She wanted his heart and mind and soul. She wanted him to wake up and live again. She was willing to give everything, risk everything and, oh, hadn’t that been what he was thinking killing seventeen thousand Yeerks? Ruthless, unthinking, _desperate_ because there was nothing else they could feel.

This time, it was Jake who declined the offer for marriage. His rejection had cut so deep it was almost a physical wound. That had been the last time they’d seen each other before the previous day. She’d realized, over time, that it was his way of trying to protect her. Trying to keep her away from the pit of darkness and blood and hatred that she’d have found if she’d been allowed to open him up. It still wounded; she’d remember his eyes when he told her ‘no’ for the rest of her life.

Cassie’s memories were pulled to a stop when she realized there was one more page behind Jake’s unfinished story. It was folded into the shape of a crude envelope, taped shut securely. On the front, Jake had written his final message.

_Cassie. We would have left by now. Inside are final orders to you. Read them only if you’re willing to be commanded by me one last time. Read them only if you promise to obey. Jake._

Hollowness was filled with bitter anger, and the note was flung with his memoires across the room. She could not get out of the house fast enough and didn’t return until the sun was setting. She was exhausted after throwing herself at work for the whole day, trying not to think of her morning passage. She’d made a decision somewhere around lunch and her brain warred with it, putting it off by taking a long shower and packing away laundry and sorting through mail. Finally, she ran out of excuses. As she knew she would, eventually. Cassie went to her bedroom slowly and picked up Jake’s scattered present, stacking it neatly before reaching for his orders.

Even now, when Jake said “jump” she’d ask “how high?”. Because that was life. And she couldn’t do anything else. She pulled apart the tape, imagining detailed instructions to contact the army or – even worse – tell his parents he wasn’t coming back. She imagined him telling her he’d changed his mind and needed her to play her part in this new mission, after all, just not with them physically on the ship. She unfolded the paper and found not a paragraph but one boldly written word in Jake’s hand.

 _Live_.

Cassie’s knees gave out. She only realized her hands were shaking when the word she was still staring at began to shimmer in front of her eyes. Frantically she turned the page around, looking for footnotes or a code or invisible ink. The single word was the only thing that remained.

 _Live_.

She raged at him, then. Howled insults and blame and guilt and questions he could not answer. The moon came out and her eyes dried but still her heart rebelled and ached and questioned the order she couldn’t follow. And then, without a second of warning, the truth dawned on her. Jake had _never_ – not once – told them to do something he knew they could not do. Some of his orders had been madness. Some of them had _seemed_ impossible. But he’d always given them things that he _knew_ they were capable of, even if they didn’t want to admit that capability to themselves. Jake, for all his talk of not knowing how people thought, knew the exact limitations of every person on his team. He would not ask her what she could not give.

 _Live_.

Jake had given her the order he had kept from Tobias and Marco and Ax and Rachel and even himself simply because he knew she was the only one who _could._ As soon as that realization hit another dawned, whispering across her thoughts in a voice that was not hers. She was the last one left. Rachel was dead, Ax was either dead or going to be soon and the other three… even if they survived, they’d never come back. She was the last one left. There were no living, breathing, moving shadows on Earth that reminded her the memories in her head were in the past. There was no lonely circling hawk or fake-smiling, empty joking boy or hollow eyed, haunted man or grey gravestone to logically point out that the mental images she remembered were no longer true. Now, she could think of Marco as he _was_ and not how reality kept telling her he _is_. Now, the reality versions of them all were lost forever. So when she closed her eyes…

Cassie blotted out the light and there they were. Smiling, brave, wild, alive Rachel untainted by fear of herself. Ax eating everything he laid his hands on with a child-like delight she’d missed over the years. Tobias, with the humanity love gave him still shining in his hawk’s eyes, especially when he looked at Rachel. Marco, telling dirty jokes just to get everybody to laugh, cynical but believing in the humour he delved out. And Jake. Jake with his slow, out-of-place smile and the eyes that were still warm and alive and shinning for her.

 _Live_.

She called Ronnie. “Hey. Do you want to go somewhere tonight? There’s this place I want to visit.” He was cautious when he picked her up; obviously happy that she genuinely seemed all right but not ready yet to push aside the fact that she could still be pretending. He didn’t understand her choice of place; she usually didn’t like spots like that.

“There’s a better mall just a few streets over,” he told her cautiously as they got out the car.

Her eyes were trained on the well-lit building before her. “I know,” she answered gently. “I just… I’ve never been here. Not once. And I… I _need_ to go in. Just… I can’t explain it but…”

“The other places have better restaurants…” He was trying to understand, but he couldn’t. Not this. In the back of her mind, Marco’s voice made fun of him. She had to try not to smile.

“Yeah, but this place…” She slipped her hand into Ronnie’s and squeezed. “This place used to be an abandoned construction site, you know? The first owners ran out of money to build this place. It only got started again two years ago. This used to be a shortcut to take from the mall down the street to get home…”

Ronnie’s hand squeezed back over hers and in her mind’s eye she saw Jake and his impossible smile and his voice in her head reiterating the order. _Live_.

She smiled wide and broad and took a step forward.


End file.
